Nathan Spears wrote:
>...my feelings about the
>aliens in the story were initially that they were trying to "enlighten" man
> by helping him learn what it had taken their race millennia to learn
>and that this teaching, while aphoristic, was meaningful.
If the aliens were trying to teach the natives compassion and mercy,
fair enough. But they're not. They're telling them that the value of
knowledge doesn't lie in its use - an absurd thing to tell a primitive
people who are just starting out on the road to civilisation. Let's
not forget Wolfe is an engineer as well as a Christian.
>Mr. Ellis expressed the idea that Wolfe might have been feeling
>indignation at the idea that "primitive" man would have been unable
>to distinguish between alien and god.
Actually, that's not what I said at all. Of course a primitive race
will be unable to distinguish between alien and god - there's no blame
in that. What I said was that Wolfe might have been feeling
indignation at modern writers making the same mistake.